


helplessness blues

by Swamp_Cat



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Trans Jaskier, fuck around and find out, the wild hunt, yeah that’s right baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swamp_Cat/pseuds/Swamp_Cat
Summary: Jaskier feels the sun of Aen Seidhe on his face for the first time in four years and his mind snaps open.Time drops. There is grass between his bare toes. The heat of the day, sun high in the sky, is real and blistering. It rushes his face, neck, curls up in his nose and mouth. Somewhere behind him, the sound of an ocean.Breath stuttering, heart one long, silent pause, Jaskier reaches out- and falls to his knees.It’s real. It’s real._Or, I wanted to write a fun little au where Jaskier spent some time in the faerie world as a child, only to realize that the wild hunt already existed in universe, and that not only did it exist but the plot of the entire third game hinges upon it. Yes, I will be using the plot of the third game. It's still the wild hunt, but make it fashion, because im just not goth like that.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 35
Kudos: 383





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> boy oh fucking boy! everyone buckle your seat belts because this here is a two parter. I've taken the liberty to make Aen Elle just wayyy cooler, and also, sorry holly black, but your plot points are mine now. kudos to anyone who spots em. see ya kids later! hit me up if you want my totally awesome dope playlist that isn't totally just hozier and the fleet foxes mixed together.

Hidden somewhere in the bright green eaves of summer there is a mighty house. 

The house runs leagues into the sky with long armed turrets and curls its toes miles under the earth with wine cellars and secrets. It arches, unfurling; with ballrooms and bedrooms of imposing ancient stone. Though it is not the largest in the world, it is big enough to get lost in. Though it is not the grandest, it is grand.

In that noble house there was a child. Cherished, preciously, in the way all small children are, the child was smiling and clever, rosy cheeked with joy and music. Because children are not always small, it was also precocious, terrible and wicked. And unloved. 

In the late summer of the child’s 12th year, the Wild Hunt came to Kerack. The child did not come home that night. 

The child did not come home for many nights after that. 

When the deep and dry lurches of August summer tumbled and fell into autumn, and the child still did not come back, it was widely considered over. It was not so strange to see a child stolen by the Hunt, and many saw it less as an event than as a consequence of living. Many did not see it at all. 

The mother of the child watched the seasons change and allowed the winter to freeze her weeping. The father of the child watched her do it from his room in the tallest tower of the mighty house and stayed far far away. They were a wealthy family, and this meant that their grief also had money. 

None of it brought the child back. This in turn made the distant father furious, for all that he had he could touch and now he could not touch his wife or his money or his child. 

Their house rotted. 

_

  
  


By the August that the child passed 16 years, he had made himself free. 

In that August, the child was most often barefoot and singing. This meant that the child was also most often smiling. He had decided that he would never go home, and in turn, never have a home again. Destiny had set his feet to the wind and pale riders had set his heart to the hounds- when the child was 12 years old the Wild Hunt came to Kerack and the child did not survive. 

Something else did. 

_

Geralt of Rivia was where things became  _ real  _ again. 

Residence at court was a terrible drug. A beautiful place to fall on the sidelines, into the hands of some pretty half familiar thing- to watch the kings and planets spin their arms and splatter blood on the stages at your feet. Nothing felt quite so important once you’d left, nothing felt quite so heavy with destiny, large and moving parts of an inexorable machinery. History shifting the edges of its massive shadow right before your eyes. 

To be fair, Jaskier didn’t write well at Court. There were too many… well, too many substances. Why write when you could feel like a flower? Why play when you could fiddle around with something just as melodious with half the temperamental tuning? 

No, he didn’t write well at Court. And when he wrote well with Geralt, well, sure, it was the riveting adventure just oodling out from Roaches backend- 

but mostly, he found that when he wrote well, it was quiet. 

Most of all he liked the autumns. After Mabon was ended, when everyone stayed home with their families hearth and the inns and farms were empty, languid. When Jaskier caved and bought wools and tartan and let his hair grow long over his ears- let himself grow farther from his nature. 

The Witcher and the Bard, alone together in the frost lined sea of night- and somehow safer for it. 

He wrote very well then. 

_

  
  


When Julian was 14 he called himself Dandelion and bled from the soles of his feet from dancing. 

Although many words and whispers passed through his ears, and although the Queen shone brightly and sparkled, Julian did not know if where he had been taken was the Seelie or Unseelie Court. They wanted him to believe that they were Seelie, and their shining silver knights sung the praises of the immortal, but Julian had slept (when he slept) in the basements with their rooted ceilings and slimy tattered holes. Julian had screamed and laughed with the imps and servants in their hidden and cavernous underhills, filled with wine and root and pale fragrant fruits. He knew by now that there was no difference. The Seelie and Unseelie were one top, each balanced over the other, spinning on madly forever. The palace of Tir Na Lia was just a gem in the brow of the beast. 

Although the Wild Hunt only took slaves, it was obvious that the Queen thought of him as a pet. Her name was Niamh, and despite everything, he loved her. When the pale riders of the Wild Hunt put him at her feet, she smiled. 

The Gwragedd Annwn, her people, were doting. They liked the simpleness of mortality, and they liked the tragedy of it too, and had no care as to what meddling did to it. They were strange and wild and lovely and they touched Dandelions long hair, braided and combed it, ran thin fingers like water over his scalp. They were more running rivers than people. 

On the days she wanted him, Niamh sat him in her alabaster court and fed him all of the milk and honey Faerie had to offer, and strange slender things beckoned him to swim in the bright shallow waters. Laughter that scraped like reeds against the earth when he flirted with them, tried on their tilted and terrible riddles, made like air with lies and words. Dandelion was good at entertaining them. He was good at keeping his own secrets, and he was lost in them, punch drunk and dizzy. 

Until he wasn’t. 

_

Deep red wine dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Julian’s face burned, but his mind was clouded, thoughts curly and ephemeral, embarrassment or humiliation one long hot current now forever melded in wildness. Niamh put her soft fingers underneath his chin. 

“Flower,” she said, voice wide and deep like the bowl of a night sky. “What is it that you wish?” 

Julian tilted his head, let her fingers support his heavy crown. A laugh bubbled and stained his lips cherry, wine rising like blood. “I wish for more to drink.” 

Her cool hand rose, held his cheek, suddenly grounding. The grip of her fingers wiped the drunkenness from his face. Julian felt her great sorrow, like fine dark silt in ancient water, slip into his mind. The warmth left his eyes and he found himself in her gaze, trapped, her twin braids swinging like pendulums as she leant from her throne to face him. 

In that moment, in her terrible realness, a misery so clean and clear in her face- Julian felt mortal. And he knew that the Queen felt mortal too. 

“No.” Niamh said. Her voice broke. “What is it that you wish?” 

And Julian told her.   
  
_

  
  


For Geralt, mercy was a secret tucked carefully underground. Hidden from the harsh winds of winter, hidden from prying eyes and hands, anyone who might touch it and find it wanting, anyone who might try and change his mind. 

For Jaskier mercy was something found. Mercy was something given. There was once a child who was terrible and bright and unloved who beat serving boys in fits of rage and pulled the wings off of flies in boredom. Mercy was a gift that child didn’t earn and a gift that could never be returned. 

He takes careful heed over it, now. One can’t help being born an unmerciful creature but maybe… maybe one can allow it to take root. 

Jaskier watches Geralt fight from dusk to dawn just so that a little girl with no chance in the  _ world _ can crawl out the other end of it. He watches and he tucks it away, carefully, unable to say he could have conceived of a world where such things happen. 

The alderman gives them a cart ride out of the estate back to Roach and Jaskier curls himself up in the corner, bright little miracle of a thing cradled in his stomach. Plucks at it carefully in his hands. Mercy, mercy. Who would have known? 

Whatever Geralt thinks, he doesn’t deserve to be left alone. 

  
  


_

  
  


It’s not like Jaskier doesn’t know he’s annoying. 

He knows. 

Most people don’t seem to get that he knows, which makes a stupid person into a very funny one. Stupid assholes are funny when they’re mad- doing what you want them to do all while they think they’re doing exactly what  _ they _ want to do: go absolutely tits over heels at the blistering idiot of a bard who wouldn’t know his own cock from a stick in the ground. 

And- and the thing is! Most of the time, nobody tries to hurt him! Or kill him! Most of the time he’s  _ smart,  _ and  _ crafty,  _ and he slips in through the window and back out again quickly as a shadow. 

But sometimes… and blame it on too much faerie wine at a developmental age, if you must, but... sometimes, he can’t resist a bit of trouble. 

One hand fisted in the neck of Jaskiers doublet and one hand gesturing into the crowd, Geralt growls out, “ _ This _ is the man you cuckolded?” 

Jaskier smiles. “I do so love it when you’re firm with me, dear.” 

Geralt's nostrils flare attractively. His hair is loose around his face, and he’s just  _ so  _ white wolf when he’s like this, it’s… 

“That is the Duke.” 

“Mhm.” 

“The Duke of Ard Carraigh.” 

“Yes.” 

“Ard Carraigh, whose hospitality we now rest under.” 

“I do believe so.” 

Geralt drops Jaskier. It’s kind of hot that he has too. Then he starts to walk away, less hot- but what sweet sorrow. “Geralt!” he whines, immediately loping after him. “Come onnnn. You think it’s funny. Look at your face, you totally think it’s funny. You can laugh, it’s okay. Vesemir isn’t here to sniff out the sounds of your blossoming vulnerability.” 

Oh, but Geralt regretted  _ ever  _ telling Jaskier Vesemir’s name. He clenched his fists and kept walking, trying to turn his face to stone. 

“Maybe,” he began, instantly wishing he’d never opened his mouth. “It would be funny if  _ I  _ wasn’t responsible for cleaning up the mess.” 

He could practically  _ smell  _ Jaskier preening. “You admit that you feel humor! Fuck! Yes, Geralt! This is a step in the right direction. Oh, and don’t worry about Duke whatisface. He knows.” 

Geralt halted his steps, head whipping around. Jaskier gave a fox grin. 

“He likes to watch.” 

_

  
  


So, uncomfortable oversharing and non consensual bodyguarding aside, Geralt knew that Jaskier knew. And Jaskier knew that Geralt secretly, in his deep dark old man heart, thought it was pretty fucking hilarious. 

It was the small things in life.

  
  


_

  
  


“I will need your name, flower.”

Julian sneers and spits. He is sober and therefore not very nice. “I know what that means. I’m not a fool, or an idiot. You want to trick me.” 

Niamh blinks. “Perhaps. Is that enough? That I might trick you?”

The air in his chest stutters, caught out. 

Niamh continues. “Is it enough that I may do you harm?” Her voice doesn’t rise, stays right where it is, high above his head, but Julian can feel the encroaching tide of it. “You’ve been done harm already. You’ll be done harm again. Is it enough? Is it good enough to stay as you are if it means you won’t come to harm?” 

It’s not. 

_

  
  


On the day of his 15th birthday his name is  _ Jaskier _ and his hair curls short and wicked like the shell of a sweetgum, and when he flirts and bumbles, they laugh because he is a mortal, not because he is wearing the wrong clothes. Not because he is tilting backwards in the wrong body. 

He has a lover who keeps him close, and he dotes on her sweetly, and she doesn’t stand a single second of it. He has a lover who is a friend first, and they are in love. Aoife has chestnut brown skin and the hair of a willow tree, a laugh like wicked light, and slender wings that shine a thousand colors in the sun. She is merciful. 

When the pixies sneak in at night to burn him and laugh, she tears out a thin throat with her teeth. The screams of her rage echo and bounce, hysterical, and the tormentors run with long gashes on their calves, and Jaskier kisses her until both their mouths are bloody. There is a wildness twinned in them, as he rocks on top of her and bites her feral grin, as she digs her pointed fingers into the burnt skin of his back, laughing at his wild and ecstatic screams. 

He asks her to put a geas on him.  _ No magic may touch you but mine,  _ she says.  _ No one can control you but me.  _

It’s a good one. He bites her shoulder and she holds the back of his neck, holds him. Aoife is Niamh’s knight. Jaskier is Niamh’s creation. They never tell each other their own stories, Jaskier because he is boring, because he was born cruel, Aoife because everyone knows her story. It’s not her story anymore. Jaskier sings it anyway. 

_

  
  


Geralt always winters in Kaer Morhen. Jaskier doesn’t understand how he can go back there, and he says so, but in his own heart he knows why. 

Jaskier doesn’t like leaving Geralt in the autumn, and so for many years he avoids finding him anywhere near the season. They go on adventures in the summer, capers in the spring. If someone speaks of a witcher and the oaks are turning orange, Jaskier makes plans to leave town. He can’t stand to watch anyone go where he can’t follow. 

In his 32nd year, Jaskier finds the Witcher face down in the peat just as the air has begun to chill and knows that it is beyond his power to leave him. 

The son of a bitch is heavy, though. 

Grumbling, he begins unbuckling his leather pauldrons. Having got them off, he lays them neatly to the side and then rolls Geralt over onto his back. Damn, but he’s really out. Not a twitch. Heart stuttering, Jaskier puts his ear to his mouth- and there is breath. Thank the gods, but Geralt is such an asshole. Saying as much, it’s as he starts in on the cuirass that Jaskier considers Roach. The horse hasn’t made so much as hide or hair available- did Geralt leave her in town? Gods above, was whatever creature that did this to him even dead? 

Well. No use in wondering now, he supposed, tugging off the vambraces. 

Unfortunately the dampness of the climate has rendered Geralt's wounds rather unfindable- and he was very muddy. Probably also bloody. Jaskier prefers to think of it all as mud though, as he cuts the trousers and the shirt. He finds the worst of the wounds to be just under the left of Geralt’s ribcage, a bite mark from a massive maw, seething red but with no obvious signs of supernatural infection. There are also claw marks on the outer thigh, although shallow enough that on Geralt they could be called superficial. Neither of them are bleeding anymore, which is better than he could’ve hoped for. 

Grey mud clumps the witchers long white hair together, creating a mockery of ringlets, locks longer than when Jaskier had seen him last- and when was that? One year ago? Two? 

A shocking ache passes through him. He sits back on his heels, momentarily winded. Just looks at Geralt's face, just for a moment. Then he makes himself get to work. 

Unfortunately, without Roaches saddlebags, the most he can do is clean and dress the wounds. It makes the lack of spectral infection lucky. The gashes on the thigh would benefit from stitching, and Jaskier does have sutures, but nothing strong enough to properly clean it- it has to wait. 

There's a clear stream nearby, so Jaskier takes off his tartan and lays it out, bedroll underneath, and then rolls Geralt back onto it. It takes a couple trips back and forth from the stream to wash all the dirt and blood out, the cold making the witcher stir in discomfort.  _ Good, _ Jaskier thinks.  _ Fucking prick.  _

He then takes his second best shirt from his pack and tears it into strips, binding the thigh first and then the chest, covering Geralt with his second tartan when he’s done. 

Then he realises he doesn’t have a horse. 

He curses, a lot. Then he braces himself. 

_

Jaskier ends up flat on his back with a hand crushing his throat against the loam. 

“Goodmorning, sunshine,” he says to one insensate Witcher. 

Geralt growls and shakes his dripping head, freezing water flying all over both of them. Jaskier feels a clod of mud hit his cheek. “Rude,” he says, “very rude.” But there's a smile all over his face. 

Geralt’s just holding his neck now. Apparently this is their new reunion position. 

“Bard,” Geralt says, evidently registering. Then, narrowing his eyes at him, nostrils flaring, “Jaskier.” 

“Yes, it is I,” he replies, trying to give the impression of a bow while completely horizontal. Then, “You’re bleeding all over me, you know.” 

Geralt backs off, tartan pooled around his hips and somehow, miraculously, preserving his modesty. Jaskier is impressed and somewhat disappointed. 

“I need Roach,” Geralt says, skipping about six different exchanges of information that would probably just be inconvenient to him but do a load of good for Jaskier’s sense of normalcy, but he just nods. “Yes, that’s why I risked my precious life and woke you. Where is she? Did you leave her in town?” 

It was no use. Geralt was already scanning the area. Belatedly, as if not really listening, he grunted, and started to rise. Jaskier jumped up after him, bracing palms out for any lurching, but other than a fortifying moment with his eyes squeezed tight the injured man didn’t falter. 

“Geralt, come on,” Jaskier said, trying to block him with his body. “Let me go get her. We can ride back together, and you’ll collect your fare, and-” Geralt grunted again, a dismissive noise that usually meant no. He took a breath, and through obvious pain said “you two always fight. She’s not in town, shes…” bending down, he picked up Jaskiers tartan and wrapped it around his waist. Jaskier got a good eyeful before snapping his gaze up to the trees and humming frantically. It was one thing to see your friends dick while you were saving his life. It was just different if he was awake, and like, really close to your face. 

Geralt stood straight again, face still twisted with discomfort. Jaskier noticed that his hair had grown far past his shoulders, now, it was nearly midway past his bicep. 

Oh, how badly he wanted a hug. Not the time.  _ Anyways.  _

Geralt looked all around again, trying to get his bearings. Then he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. 

Somewhere far off there was a panicked whinney. Jaskier was put out. “How come you never taught me that?” 

Geralt didn’t miss a beat. “You’re too irresponsible.” 

Then, “Where are my clothes.” 

Jaskier allowed himself to become preemptively defensive. “You were unconscious! Wounded! I-” 

_

  
  


By the time they had made it back to Roach, Geralt had taken all of Jaskier’s extra clothes. 

This meant mostly that he was enshrined in blankets and cloaks. Roach nickered at him though, and it was totally a laugh, which was satisfying. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” Jaskier whispered, Geralt's grip on his forearms vice-like as he helped him to the ground. The walk to Roach had almost outdone him. There was a sheen of sweat over his face, hair drying knotted and frayed. “It’s okay. What do you need?” 

Geralt had him fetch a “dark mauve” and squarish bottle from his pack. 

Staring at the fine shadows of the woods over Roaches back, Jaskier allowed himself another moment of that deep unshakable ache, pale hair in his mind. Then he let it go. 

The silence and vastness of the night trickled into his head. 

Although it was autumn, and the air he blew out was fog, he could still hear the faint sounds of crickets and birds in the trees. 

It was with a steadier hand that he returned to Geralt, on the ground, and began to unbind his wounds. “All over?” he asked, glancing at his face. A short jerky nod. So, this was a painful one. Jaskier barked a laugh and tossed him the clean end of a bandage. “Better bite down, then.” 

The skin sizzled when the potion hit. Jaskier bit back a gag, visceral sense memory hitting him like a punch to the throat. Geralt didn’t buck, but he was absolutely biting down on the bandage. 

“Okay,” Jaskier breezed with exhausted cheer. “Now for the thigh one.” 

_

The fire spit sparks and the wind took them high into the trees. 

Jaskier passed Geralt the flask. Geralt took a swig, smaller than his last few, which had been (deservedly) greedy. 

Jaskier sighed. “Sorry I had to cut your shirt.”

Geralt grunted. “S’fine.” 

“Eh.” Geralt handed him the flask again but Jaskier didn’t drink. “What was it, anyway?” 

“Kikimora.” 

“Ah. Classic. Not particularly song worthy, I assume.” 

Geralt did a laugh grunt. You could tell because it was slightly more exhale than grunt. Jaskier quirked a tired smile and side eyed him. 

“Nearly lost it, did we? I don’t know what would’ve happened to you if my sorry ass hadn't found your even sorrier ass.” 

“Well,” Geralt said, taking the flask out of Jaskiers hands without prompting. He drank and then didn’t follow up. Jaskier, tired and old and achy (and  _ old)  _ just couldn’t give it up this time. He could never give it up. 

“What usually does?” he asked. “Happen to you?” 

Geralt looked at him like he was telling a joke. “When you’re not around?” like it was funny. Jaskier nodded. Geralt snorted. “I’m not fragile. I’m not going to break. It’s-“ 

“I don’t think that’s true.” Jaskier interrupted, suddenly and without warning  _ spitting  _ mad. “And I don’t think it’s very fucking nice of you to say shit like that to me as if it doesn’t matter, as if,” his face was burning. “As if, if you don’t  _ need _ it from me then-“ he was so exhausted- “Then it doesn’t touch you. If I give it.” 

The fire crackled. Somewhere, a night bird hoots. Jaskier can feel every cent of the world pulling him down into the earth. Geralt just looked so damn sad. Not like he was  _ feeling  _ sad. It just made Jaskier sad to see it, whatever it was. The aloneness. That old private Witcher atonement, going on behind the scenes. Never forgiving anything for what he was made to be. 

“I’m not very fucking nice, though. Am I.” He said. 

Jaskier shook his head. “You’re one of the kindest people I know, Geralt.” 

Oh, yeah. That face. 

_

  
  


When Jaskier comes out from under the hill for the first time in four years, it is an accident. 

He didn’t mean to find the door. 

He didn’t mean to open it. 

He didn’t mean to let it close behind him. 

_

  
  


Before Jaskier is born, and before Dandelion is born, and just three months before Julian is born, a blessing is put on the baby. Roisin Cara Pancratz, mother to be, sits in a clearing alone and waits. She knows what's on the way to the life inside her. She knows that it is beyond her, she remembers what she was taught by her grandmothers, before fathers and husbands and lovers and hands came into her life and pulled apart the curtains. 

But it’s still her life, yet. Her life to make and hers to form. You couldn’t cut this life out of her without killing them both and that made it  _ hers,  _ if nothing else did. 

So she sat, midsummer evening, pools of loose gown around her, and waited. 

They came just as the sky began to dust itself with purple twilight. 

They asked her what she brought for them- she gave them milk, honeycomb, a single framed painting of an eye no bigger than an outstretched fist. A length of frayed ribbon from her first piece of clothing. They graciously accepted her gifts, and then laid their hands upon her shoulders. 

“ _ He will have the mouth for it,”  _ they said. 

_ “He will have the hands,”  _ one whispers and another _ “to usher in time.”  _

_ “He will have the voice for the story,”  _

_ “He will call in the day with his singing-”  _

_ “He will pull down the night with his music-” _

_ “He’ll caw harder than a crow-”  _

Their voices swirl like a tiny storm around her, rising in cacophony. 

One looks in her eyes. It put its fingers on her cheek. 

“ _ He will be- ”  _ hesitation- “ _ Protected.”  _

  
  


_

  
  
  


Jaskier feels the sun of Aen Seidhe on his face for the first time in four years and his mind snaps open. 

Time drops. There is grass between his bare toes. The heat of the day, sun high in the sky, is real and blistering. It rushes his face, neck, curls up in his nose and mouth. Somewhere behind him, the sound of an ocean. 

Breath stuttering, heart one long, silent pause, Jaskier reaches out- and falls to his knees. 

It’s real. It’s  _ real.  _

He presses his head to the ground, to the sweet grass, presses past the point of pain, body curling reflexively into the earth. A sound builds in his chest thick like thunder and tears out of his mouth acrid and metallic as lightning. The roar rolls over the sea cliff, on and on into the distance, and he can feel it- he can feel the distance between himself and the sky, the glorious and maddening infinity of it all. 

If Tir Na Lia was a palace, this was- what? 

This was the world. 

Jaskier was back in the world. 

He gasped it into himself, into being. The heat of sunlight on his body as he rolled onto his back, threw his arms into the grass around him, every sensation painting him with brilliant light. Awake. The firm earth against his broad shoulders, the stink of hot sea on the air. He was awake. He presses his knuckles into his eyes. He was awake. 

_

  
  


By the time Jaskier had made it off the windy slope and away from the sea, the bright midday light had slipped down the sky into golden afternoon. He doesn’t know where he is. The soles of his feet burn, and his head pounds with a thirst which mounts in him a growing and dreadful certainty. 

He should not have been able to leave as he did. As a mortal, he should have been doomed. 

The terrain evens out and Jaskier comes upon a road. There is a stone mile marker, old, wedged in the wild grass. Its engraving places him ten miles down the road from Oxenfurt. 

He’d been to Redania as a child with his mother- he remembered when this mile marker was brand new, the excitement that they were now so very close. 

He should be dead. 

_

  
  


When Jaskier had finally made it into Oxenfurt, night was creeping up from the west, painting the sky around the sun fantastical and unlikely colors. Jaskier, lost in the sea of city people, lolled his head and leant his body against some stone house and just watched it set. Fatigue seemed to make his body light. How miraculous of an accident, this world. Beauty so ready to be born it didn’t wait for the architect. 

A voice rang out of the crowd. 

“Goddesses tits- blessed may she be-”

Jaskier’s ears twitched. 

“ _ Julian? _ ” 

_

In the time since meeting Ferrant de Lettenhove, Jaskier had learnt that during his four years in Aen elle, 75 had passed on Aen Seidhe, and of all the people he knew, Ferrant de fucking Lettenhove was still alive. 

Just barely. 

The man toddled around his rooms, picking things up and putting them down again seemingly at random. Jaskier held a cup of tea and did his best not to laugh like a crazy person. 

“The Pancratz boy,” Ferrant muttered. “I could have sworn…” Jaskier tensed. “Could have sworn…”

“Ah!” he crowed triumphantly and pulled a single cube of sugar from his dressing gown, promptly dropping it into Jaskier’s tea. 

“Knew I had that on me somewhere. Now.” The old man finally stopped his weaving through the room. 

“What in the world are you doing lazing about barefoot in Oxenfurt?” 

Jaskier swallowed too soon and choked on a mouthful of scalding tea. 

The crux of the issue was that the last time Jaskier had seen Ferrant, they’d both been about seven. To be fair, Ferrant was maybe five months older (something he never failed to bring up when they were ever around each other). It was a stretch, but it was possible the old coot literally thought ‘younger cousin’ and just didn’t dig any deeper.

Also, Jaskier had been presumed dead for over 70 years. 

It was only by some divine providence that Ferrant, in his old age, was completely senile. 

How he’d managed to remember the face of his long dead estranged cousin in a crowd of hundreds, but not that he was never a son, and not that he definitely shouldn’t be fresh as a daisy, Jaskier would never know. He finished swallowing his tea. 

“It’s- I’m taking a sabbatical,” he said. Ferrant raised an eyebrow and sat across from him, curiosity shining like gold through his wizened visage. “To- ah- find my vocation. My parents, you know-” 

“Blessed may they rest,” Ferrant intoned. Well, mark that down as a pleasant surprise. He cleared his throat. 

“Yes. Blessed they be...They sent me to temple school. Before they ah, passed. And now…” 

Ferrant hummed as though coming to a conclusion all of his own. “You have to find your way.” 

Jaskier nodded, feeling oddly touched. All the strangeness of the day seemed to coalesce upon him, then, vivid images of Underhill and Aen Elle swimming over the candle-cast shadows on Ferrant de Lettenhove’s ancient face. The memory of where he had been, those esoteric halls and their cast of creatures laying itself, moaning, over where he was- these tiny and cluttered attic rooms, this tiny and cluttered man, everything in them all so terribly real. 

“Well, my boy,” Ferrant said as Jaskier swallowed back the needle prick of his tears. “You’re quite welcome to stay here as long as you need. It’s not lush, but it’s… something.” He stood and patted his chest, finding his tiny spectacles, and peered out the window. 

“My, my!” he said. “Dark out already. I’m afraid I’ll have to retire. How time flies when you’re old.” 

Jaskier was obliged to lift his knees and allow Ferrant to the other side of the room. The old man opened a wooden door and disappeared into what Jaskier dearly hoped was a bedroom. 

He sat his tea down on the low table in front of him and stretched his bruised body on the couch where he sat, not yet ready to stand and blow out the candles. 

Music and laughter filtered up through the window from the street, all sweet with meaning, like the smell of rain, or old paper. Long shadows danced upon the slats of the ceiling, Jaskier their lone awed audience. 

In a moment he would get up and blow out the candles. In a moment he would face the dark vastness of his own mind. But for then, just right then- he laid on his back and breathed. 

_

  
  


“Do  _ you  _ believe in Destiny?” 

The fire crackled between them and Jaskier smiled, finished unrolling his pallet. 

“I’m a bard, aren’t I?” 

“That’s no answer.” 

Jaskier sat. He looked up at Geralt where he stood, all naked without his armor or swords, childlike. Geralt turned his gaze away. 

“I do,” he said, softly. “Yes. I find that my life, life in general…” he sighs. 

“Maybe Destiny makes things in life easier to take. Maybe it’s only a story we tell ourselves. I just think it also makes it all a hell of a lot of fun.” 

_

  
  


The fever begins three days into his stay with Ferrant. 

Since finding his way to Oxenfurt, Jaskier had become something of an errand boy for the ageing Viscount. It was a position he was familiar with. Ferrant would have him run missives, scrolled and sealed with wax, all throughout the various buildings of the college. Despite his rather obvious infirmity, Ferrant seemed to be somewhat of import when it came to Temerian and Redenian relations- that is, if the impatience with which his missives were received was any indicator. Ferrant also had him take down dictation. Jaskier understood at some level the sensitivity of the documents, but the thing about being kidnapped at age 12- he didn’t know shite about politics. Most things Ferrant said flew in one ear and straight out the other. 

The only times Jaskier really stressed himself to pay attention was when any talk of geography came up, which was thankfully often. Lots could happen in 75 years, and while political indifference could be feigned, a complete and total ignorance of all regions outside of Temeria was a bit more problematic. He was still trying to put together whether Kaedwen was above or below them when the withdrawal finally struck. 

The shaking came first. In those early days, he had eaten nearly nothing, literally unable to stomach the taste of almost anything but water and tea. So the trembling was fine, at first. Expected. 

At the end of the third day, (which had been long for both of them) Ferrant had a full meal sent up and insisted they share it together. Jaskier, unenthused but not thinking much of it except that it would be a truly nauseating experience, ate nearly half of what was on his plate. 

The rest of the night was passed in utter agony. Mostly, he vomited, which was bad enough. Ferrant had long since gone to bed and Jaskier had to keep sneaking about, half out of his mind, to empty his bucket.

By the time the retching had passed it had begun to come up dark, like blood. This was also around the time he first lost consciousness. 

_

  
  


A dream. 

_ Someone with pale hair was calling, in the woods, calling over and over again. Calling for someone, someone else in the woods.  _

_ Julian didn’t belong here. He crept deeper backwards into the bracken that hid his face. Creatures like him weren’t real here. They didn’t exist.  _

_

  
  


_ “Julian? Julian!”  _

_ “-it… Julian!” _

Jaskier jolted awake. Immediately, he was aware of an all consuming pain. The floor beneath his body was hard and bruising on the sharper edges of his joints, and he was halfway concealed from the light, partially curled up underneath the cot he usually slept on. 

Someone was calling his name, his real name. His heart ached.

“Niamh?” he rasped. “Niamh?” 

Had she come for him? Had she really left Aen Elle to come find him? 

A light smack to the cheek. “I’m no paramour, boy. Come to your senses, come up. My knees can’t take this.”

Ah. No, then. 

Head full of cotton and body wracked with shivers, Jaskier wormed his way from underneath his hiding place and tried to understand what was going on. He couldn’t get his mind through this brick wall of  _ want _ and  _ need _ and  _ thirst _ . He couldn’t breathe through it. He couldn’t breathe. 

  
  


_

A dream.

_ A girl is dying. Her life, her fire, her insides, roiling painful red- is this any wronger than it would’ve been? Is it any worse? She’s letting her insides all over the ground. There's a creature pale as ice over her, pale as prophecy, pale as death. His silver sword through her center. It was an accident. It was a mistake.  _

_

  
  


When he became conscious again, he was lying in his cot. 

_

  
  


By all reference and reason, Jaskier should be wasting away. He should be  _ dying.  _

Ferrant won’t stop fucking force feeding him beans. If Jaskier weren’t pathetically bedridden, he’d snap the old man's fingers so far backwards you could use them to curl hair. Well, he  _ wouldn’t,  _ because he was  _ grateful,  _ but desperately wished that he  _ could.  _ As it was, he couldn’t even fend off a timid spoonful of beans. He should die just for this if nothing else. Three days changing Ferrants horrifically frequent full chamber pots, and now he was being sponge bathed by a man who couldn’t even remember his own middle name. If things were right, if this were Aen Elle, a place of  _ reason _ , anyone in their right mind would just put him out of his misery. 

Ferrant had obviously lost all sense of that long ago. 

_

  
  


They were playing music in the square. Jaskier, sweating and delusional, hobbles all the way to the window, feverish to be closer. 

Its fast, and desperate, the people all clapping and howling and stomping faster and faster and  _ faster.  _ There’s bagpipes, and drums, metal percussion lighting up like electricity behind his eyes. Women dance, ephemeral manic blurs of silk and rhythm. Jaskier presses his damp forehead to the window and pines. 

_

It’s been two weeks when the fever finally breaks and Jaskier can  _ taste  _ again. 

Ferrant practically cries in relief. Jaskier definitely cries in relief. He’s alive, and he absolutely shouldn’t be, and it feels amazing. Everyday he wakes up starving, like he hasn’t eaten a thing in four years. The strength returns to his body, his legs, and he can dance again! He can bathe his Gods damned self! They wait out this second wind, he and Ferrant, shakily hopeful, but it holds fast- and damned if Jaskier doesn’t spin that crazy old fart into a waltz in celebration. (Nearly brains him, but Ferrant’s laughing that rattling laugh so hard he barely even notices.) 

Out of thanks and a large helping of embarrassment, Jaskier goes about cleaning the ever living shit out of Ferrants rooms. It’s still summer yet, and he leaves the window open all day, beating rugs over the sill and occasionally throwing light rubbish. When no one is walking by. Mostly. 

Out of respect for Jaskier’s wishes, Ferrant doesn’t tell anyone his true identity- refers to him as a nephew usually, or just ‘the boy’. Suits him fine, and he’s done with far worse. Most of the old mans colleages think him some kind of queer apprentice, and none of them know what to make of his two week sequestering at all. 

Jaskier starts sneaking into the lectures. 

It’s just a bit of fun, at first, fascination with this strange human council of thought, it’s plain and simple honesty. Craft. No magic, not really, but in a way- beyond magic. It becomes less for fun, then, and he actually starts to worry about being caught because he honestly couldn’t bear to have it taken away from him. 

Ferrant doesn’t notice about the classes. In his own way, though, he notices the change. 

The fire was a steady heat, orange and lovely, and it was the only light they needed in the November twilight. Ferrant read while Jaskier finished up copying some notes for him- his penmanship was hopeless, but it was better than that blind bats chicken scratch. 

Suddenly, Ferrant cleared his throat, a sound like sand attempting to copulate with more sand. Jaskier looked up at him. 

“I noticed…” Ferrant began, with such caution in his voice that Jaskier fell immediately into panic. “Well, I noticed that… You’ve been here quite awhile.” 

Jaskier felt his stomach sour. This was it. He was being removed. 

“And I thought, well…” Gods. Just get  _ on  _ with it. “You might like to, eh…” He would have to sleep in the woods. “Enroll yourself for an education here?” 

A long pause stretched. Jaskier blinked, then blinked again. 

“What?” 

Ferrant closed his book and took off his spectacles, body language embarrassed. “You show a great aptitude for learning, Julian, and it pains me to put you to work like some kind of stable boy. I’m sure they would accept you gratefully, you’ve a handsome pedigree-” 

“I- I don’t have any money.” 

Ferrant blinked. “Why, of course you do! Julian, hasn’t anyone informed you of your inheritance? You are the sole heir of your father's estate!” 

Jaskier couldn’t breathe. Hadn’t his parents had anymore children? Hadn’t they moved on? Why couldn’t Ferrant see, if he knew all these things, why couldn’t he remember if he’d already made Jaskier tea, or which day of the week it was, or whether he’d told this story before, or that Jaskier was a ghost? 

“I- I want to-” Jaskier choked. Ferrant pushed himself standing with the arms of his chair, eyes glittering. 

“Then you will, my boy! You needn't linger in these doldrums any longer, wasting your youth in penance. You’ve a born blessing for tune, you only need a teacher. I’ll see it done.” 

  
  


_

  
  


Heaven help the man, but he does. Jaskier doesn’t know what dark magic takes place in order to get a dead man's name on the dean's list of students, and he doesn’t want to. 

Music is bliss, the movement of blood, wind. These things he knew. 

Craft, creation, forming- the secret language of mathematics that was woven into the very air- these things he learned, and all that he was offered he took voraciously. Those students taking similar courses were all given the same fare, musical theory, eurhythmics, the two forms of musical notation- composition- and every student was to choose an instrument. At first, Jaskier went straight for the harp, dewy eyed with thoughts of Niamh and her long boned hands, but he soon became morose at the thought of how cemented the instrument was, how immoveable. 

He took up the lute. It was simple, transportable, and most of all- it made music. 

He fell in love. Clean and simple. He turned 17, and then 18, quickly growing his repertoire, gathering respect and admiration. It felt as though he was on fire, climbing the echelons of Destiny, grabbing with both hands onto the tool which could craft the future. 

Ferrant died five days before Jaskiers 19th birthday. 

Jaskier left Oxenfurt after two. 

  
  


_

  
  


On their midday border patrol, the Knights of the Loch had found a unicorn. 

The court was in uproar. A page had sent word of the capture at least thirty minutes ago, and Niamh had called for Jaskier immediately. “Flower,” she’d said, pleased and serene, when he appeared. She’d taken his hand and smiled. “I want you to see something.” 

He was seeing it now. They were killing the unicorn. It was screaming. 

In moments like these, Jaskier found that he went somewhere else. While his body stood politely straight and kept a lovely simple face, as if someone easily amused pondering something of light consequence, his mind inverted and left the room. It was a clever trick. 

It wasn’t working very well just right then. 

The unicorn would not stop its terrible  _ human  _ wailing. 

What was worse, the courtesans were wailing too; wailing in triumph, in holy rage. A heat like death assaulted Jaskier’s body, miasmic, ill, and he trembled invisibly. He wanted to grab Niamh’s hand and scream for it to be over, for it to be taken back, he wanted to vomit, he wanted to take the wicked curved knife and slash every single wailing throat left inside the room. 

Niamh was saying his name. Jaskier snapped back into his head. 

A Knight of the Loch stood before him, pale eyes flat. In his hands he held a writhing mass of flesh. A heart. 

Jaskier looked to Niamh, enthroned on his left. Her eyes sparkled with depthless love. She nodded. 

It was then that Jaskier noticed the hall was silent. Nothing wailed. He could hear his own breathing. 

The unicorns heart was still living and Jaskier, he felt his mind struggling against it, saw his own blood filled heart in those hands, subjugated, raging past death, saw the treason in his own life, the inherent betrayal of his own continued existence. 

The unforgivable nature of what he was about to do to keep it. 

Niamh had given him such gifts before, made them public spectacle. Let her handmaidens titter and feed the gold-collared beast treats, made him drunk on vapors, made him laugh until he was sick, regurgitating old blood on their sparkling white floors. 

She had never asked him to eat a kindred beast before. Never something that spoke or cried or fought for freedom. 

Whatever she thought he was to her, she was Jaskier’s king, and she had just ripped out the heart of her enemy. Now she was feeding it to the dogs. 

Jaskier’s hands cupped before him. The Knight placed the slippery heart inside, still pulsing lightly. 

Jaskier stared at it without seeing. Time beat, on and on, every heartbeat, the one in his hands and the one in his chest, so hard and so firm it darkened his vision. 

The court grew tense, but it had ceased to matter. The only ones left in the room were Jaskier and his heart. All that was in his mind, his head, as he watched it carefully slow, was one thing: 

_ I never thought I’d have to face you like this.  _

He held it to his chest and  _ screamed.  _

It was a scream that had its own wake, its own force: things in the room were physically pushed from him, breath stolen from lungs, all to feed his own wild and burning sound. It was a call. It was a war hammer. 

It cost him. 

Niamh stood at the first sound, robes whipping like columns of stars. The swanmades and sidhe around them shrieked inharmoniously, precious things clattered and clanged their way to the ground. The light of the room darkened like thunder, and the sound of it all rang with precedent, with history: Jaskier had done something here. He had shifted the tracks. 

The Knight snarled and latched onto Jaskier’s hair with sharp fingers, forcing him to drop the heart as he used it as a handle to drag him to the carcass. He held onto the cold vambraces and thrashed, howling, and the Knight dragged his knees through the blood before forcing his face down, down, down. 

It choked him, deep and coagulated, painted his vision red. The Knight pressed harder, the ancient sandstone of the dias grinding the skin of his cheek into gore, pressing and pressing until bright white sparks of agony like flashing stars lit up Jaskier’s face. With one eye open, he saw Niamh above him. She looked at him with fear in her eyes. 

Jaskier laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. 

_

  
  


It’s raining. 

A shiver sharp as steel runs down Jaskier’s back, and he tilts his face to the dark grey sky- it’s an excellent kind of rain, strong and wild, and although it hasn’t reached them yet Jaskier can feel it coming on, can see in the wind that turns the trees silver, flipping all of the green upside down. 

He keeps chatting, plodding by roach, hopping every few steps in excitement. The gale gets in his hair and blows it all around, making Roach whuff. The air is sweet and dark and fragrant with the storm, so wide open it makes Jaskier’s chest soar. He hums, glad that the lute is away, but still regretting its absence. The tall and ancient trees ache and moan, and Jaskier makes a little song for them and then sings it. It starts low and ends low, like a war ballad, but the middle is exciting and quick, self contained. The wind comes faster. 

“You’re happy,” Geralt says, low. Jaskier smiles back at him, up the road a few paces and walking backwards. 

“It’s a beautiful day.” 

Geralt glances up at the sky and raises an eyebrow. Jaskier smiles wider. He sings his song again. 

It starts to pour. 

_

  
  


Jaskier didn’t know how long he walked. Only knew that he was going deeper, farther from Niamh, farther from Aoife, farther from anyone who knew his name, who had fingers three knuckles deep in his soul. At some point he came across a pool of luminescent water, and he stooped over it, looked at his bloody face. It flaked off, staining the water when he touched it. 

He spends at least half an hour there scrubbing his cheeks and hands clean. 

Then he keeps walking. 

_

  
  


When Jaskier comes out from under the hill for the first time in four years, it is an accident. 

He didn’t mean to find the door. 

He didn’t mean to open it. 

He didn’t mean to let it close behind him. 


	2. hares on the mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News of Cintra’s fall reaches him in early autumn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha... hiiiii! sooo its been nearly a year. I wrote this all when quarantine first started can you believe? anyways i have like this entire story arc planned out and half written i SWEAR, i just wanted to remind everyone that it exists. love you and sorry in advance <3

News of Cintra’s fall reaches him in early autumn. 

The urging of that fickle mistress restlessness had long since brought Jaskiers feet to rest on more rustic soil than he ever before would have dared so close to the seasons first snow: he’s in Brugge, and further from the coast than he’d like, as the inland woods give him shivers with their pools of stagnant shadow. 

He’d scorned himself for recklessness, when he first left the keep in Vidort, with its high walls and fire-warmed stone. It didn’t help him to turn around and go back or be any less of a fool than he was, but for old times sake, he’d done it. 

Now more than ever he considered the strange turnings of fortune as he listened to the town crier detail the path of the Nilfgaardian troops northwards from Nazair, the bloody siege of Cintra, and the suicide of the Queen. 

They’d all known of Nilfgaard’s movements. It was just another one of those things. Nobody thinks the plague will land on their house until it does. 

So, he was fucked, desperately fucked. Not even in a special way or fun way, no. There was no whimsical curse, or noble misunderstood hero. Just the vast, all consuming wave of violence that threatens every man woman and child with a pulse and something to beg for. 

War.

_ Where are fate's hands in a civilian death _ ? he thought, completely hysterical, as he packed his meager belongings into a waxed canvas bag. It seemed everyone thought they had gathered a lot of maturity until war came calling and you realized how you were completely fucking alone. 

Once he was walking he gathered back some sense. 

The trees were turning the majority of red and yellow, taking the dry august and making dust of any old green still holding on. The main roads were flooded with soon to be refugees, rocking carts and silent children, oxen and goats and chickens all somehow cowed by the black shadow of death hanging over everything. Even those fleeing early, a hopeful act, had no expectations of survival. 

Some people weren’t leaving, which was how it always was. Either they couldn’t or they wouldn’t and in the end it made no difference, which Jaskier didn’t think about, and he didn’t think about it so hard that the song he'd been noodling about Elenor and her hair of barley was now almost 15 minutes long. In that amount of time she both gained a husband and lost him to the bloody vagaries of war. 

So it went. After two days traveling with the caravan from his part of Brugge, Jaskier split off, heading east skirting Sodden, following the Ina, a dangerous and stupid thing to do alone. He passed through Armeria on the banks, slept the night in a real bed and shared news and a bit of playing, exhausted as he was. People expected big bad news from a courier type and this time they really got it, so pay was so-so. Unable to pay it much attention, he left after resting one full day. 

There was a black inkling of a notion hiding behind his brain, invisible to him, which warded him towards some things and away from others. When he got into something like this, the best thing to do was listen, and the only way to listen was to shut it all off and very carefully pay it absolutely no attention. When he tried, invariably, he tried too hard. The key was to never try at all. 

For a long time, or maybe an inexorably short one, he goes alone. Long enough that the ground grows hard with frost. Long enough that the trees lose their august foliage. Long enough that his breathing grows thin with every gale force wind of pure winter, the pure winter he faces head on and trudges straight into, against all facets of common sense. 

It’s like this that he finds Geralt within a mile of the Pontar. 

_

  
  


“You fucking bastard,” is the first thing he says, not sure even as the words leave his mouth if he means Geralt or himself. “Oh, my language,” is the second, because peeking from behind the Witcher’s comically large form is… a child. A girl, if her hair and clothing is to be believed. Her ashen hair. 

Jaskier stares. 

He looks at the girl. Then he looks at Geralt, whose face doesn’t matter, who cares what his face is doing, except it does and Jaskier cares and it’s so awfully  _ open _ . Eyes like a raw wound.  _ Please _ , he thinks,  _ put that away.  _

He looks at the girl again, who looks right back with a bit of fear and a lot of disdainful nose wrinkling and that pale, pale hair. 

She looks just like her mother. 

“Oh, Geralt,” he murmurs. It might’ve been true that his pace had gotten ahead of itself. He hasn’t slept in two days. 

Jaskier sinks to the ground, covers his face in his hands, and starts laughing. He’s been alone a long time. Two months, maybe. It’s a good laugh. Hearty. When he’s done with that he rubs his cheeks and eyes vigorously and very firmly decides not to cry. Hands still over his face, he says, 

“I’m waiting.”

There’s an emphasis on  _ waiting.  _

He’s earned, he thinks, the right to be petulant. 

There’s a lengthy pause, and then “...For what?” Bless him, he actually sounds confused. 

Jaskier takes his hands off his eyes and blinks up at him. 

“My apology,” he says primly. “I’m afraid that’s going to have to come first.” 

An even longer pause. 

Very consternated, Geralt says “Jaskier,” and Jaskier all but shouts “I can sit here all day!” 

He’s very embarrassed to be doing this in front of a little girl who is definitely old enough to decide he is insane, but some things can’t be helped. “Just watch me! I’m crazy now, you’ve ruined me and now I’m crazy like you and all your friends and you’re just going to have to say it.” 

Perhaps it's a poor move, shouting at a man who, last seen, accused him of being the sole shoveler of shit upon his wretched life. There’s really no reason for Geralt to stand here and make his child watch a full grown adult break down on the forest floor, or really any reason for him to stay and deal with Jaskier at all. 

But Jaskier knows he can’t stand seeing people cry. It’s actually incredible. Big hulking thing of a man and he just gives up the second anyone pulls out the water works. Jaskier’s

just never quite had the guts to use it to his advantage before. 

It’s freeing. 

“Oh, for the love of-“ The forest floor rustles as Geralt walks to him on the ground, and it looks like Jaskier wasn’t firm enough with himself because he’s really crying now. 

Geralt puts a hand on his shoulder and brings himself to his knees beside him. Jaskier gulps in a big breath of air and clutches at the impermanent ground of scattered leaves.  _ I thought you were dead _ , he’s saying between breaths.  _ I was going to die. I was going to die in a crowd of people who didn’t know my name. I was going to die after  _ you _.  _

Geralt wraps his arms around his shoulders and clutches him like he’s the only thing keeping Jaskier from clawing his own eyes out and says, over and over again,  _ I’m sorry.  _

_

There’s a moment of reflection while being cradled in those… absurdly deft arms, where Jaskier really considers how lucky he is to be surrounded by emotionally demented freaks his whole life. 

You know, he’s got it pretty good. 

_

  
  


So, now the princess of Cintra knows he’s not cool. 

This was probably unavoidable, but first impressions can lead you to discard hard evidence of character traits for a long long time. Usually Jaskier relies on this in order to keep his friends. Now he’s got nothing. 

As a kind of bribe, he’s offered to let her play the lute. This is actually suitable for her, probably because Jaskier spent at least twenty minutes bemoaning it’s absolutely precious nature and how now that Geralt, that oaf, is around again, it’ll probably see it’s third scratch in two decades. What would Filandrel the Golden Hair’d, Prince of Elves, messiah of his people, Gifter of Lutes, say to him if he knew? She’s endearingly stumbling her way through a set of scales, brow stony as if it were a matter of life and death, when he feels Geralt's look on him again. 

There's a fire between them and it still gets hotter. 

“You’re taking her to the witcher fortress,” he says into the thickness. Geralt nods. Jaskier dips his head up and down a few times, shuffling away his flint and steel for no reason except to not look up. “Well,” he says, “It’s not too out of the way. I may as well walk you awhile.” 

No more sounds from either of them but Cirilla's hesitant plucking. There's no refusal, no  _ It's too dangerous, _ no furrowed irritation. Geralt gives him a small nod, and they go back to not speaking. 

That night the three of them go to sleep without food, distant from each other like solitary stars. 

_

  
  


“Red looks terrible on you.” 

Jaskier choked on his mouthful of bread. 

With shaky hands, he put the heel back on its plate, chuckling a bit. “I suppose I should take warning rather than offense. What in hell are you doing here, Aoife?”

The Queen's captain was jammed, beleaguered by armor as she was, in the slim opening of the oaken carved door that bore the servants exit from the Libraries. She had a jaunty grin that spelled lots of trouble for Jaskier, as when she was feeling jaunty she was most delighted in making him very embarrassed. 

He felt a ping of dull excitement at her appearance. It was quickly washed over with a retroactive wave of guilt. Closing his current book, he stacked it atop the others with his gaze averted. The scholar's smock he wore dragged its pontiferous sleeves and sent dust flying everywhere as he dragged the tomes from one end of the table to the other. 

Having freed herself from the door, Aoife clanged her armor clad arse onto some terrible hard backed chair and sighed expansively, hair tittering like wind chimes in the gust. “Well, I ran out of children to murder. Got bored. Wanted to see if you’d let me beat you at wrestling three times in a row again.” 

Grabblenach casts her an arch glance for that, a book so large over his tiny bony knees it could probably kill him just from tilting the wrong way. Aoife just slumped even more severely and gave Grabble a saucy wink. Jaskier laughed at her helplessly, heart leaping. 

Clearing his throat, he said “I’m afraid I haven't time to lose to you today. I’m busy.” he punctuated that statement by letting four tons of book slam open right in the middle, which in turn let loose a cloud of dust so prolific it made Aoife sputter and choke. Jaskier pretended he wasn't holding his breath. 

Coughing, Aoife leaned forward and said “busy? What could possibly be more important than wrestling?” Her posh accent making this line of enquiry particularly prattish. Jaskier glanced at Grabblenach, but the old imp was busy chewing hemp stems and spitting them out into buckets already filled with pasty fibers, ready to be spread on screens by the pixies that hover just to either side, eagerly awaiting more gunk. 

“Research,” he said, eyes still on the paper pixies. Let Aoife think he’s flirting. It won’t hurt. 

“Research?” she replied, aghast. “Sounds terribly dangerous. And I can’t possibly tempt you away?”

“Afraid not,” Jaskier told her, meeting eyes again at last. She looked back at him, all molten curiosity. A jolt of regret goes up his belly. He tilts up his chin. “This stuff is classified.”

_

The three of them were moving again before dawn. The girl rode, half asleep, while they both walked alongside her. Together they’d spent a sunless half hour trying to make her rouse, to the point where she nearly cried tears of frustration, which had flustered Geralt and made him rough with her, at which point Jaskier had furiously whispered  _ you’re too hard on her _ and lifted her from the armpits onto Roaches saddle, deadweight. 

It was an utterly grey morning. The air was so heavy with mist that the sound of their footsteps didn’t make it to their own ears. The wetness had seeped into their clothes and packs and, it seemed, their very bones. Jaskier felt heavy, sedentary. It was a sweet feeling, entangled with his soreness, a reminder that he was alive enough to be tired on such a wild morning. Some weren’t. Many, even. 

Geralt held Roaches reigns in his left fist, his shoulders curved by some invisible force. He was an angular shadow in the pre-dawn light. When Jaskier looked over, the low familiarity of him made his chest ache, a deep and unrelenting cut. He pictured the wound as though a part of the earth beneath his feet. Then he pictured himself walking over it. 

As the sun burned its first weak and tender rays through the wet dark, Jaskier began to sing. 

_ “On the way to your brother's house, in the valley deep  _

_ by the river bridge a cradle floating beside me _

_ In the whitest water on the bank against the stone _

_ you will lift his body from the shore and bring him home.” _

_ “Oliver James, washed in the rain, no longer…” _

_

  
  


The Libraries were empty as Jaskier opened the very last tome. Inside, in a meticulously illuminated script, it said  _ The Epic of Niamh the Golden. _ When Jaskier read the title, he nearly leapt from his seat. Underneath, it read: 

_ One of the few mortal men to be invited to Tir Na Lia was Oisin, son of Finn, chief of the legendary Temerian warriors of Aen Seidhe. The Temians were out hunting one day when a lady of great beauty approached them. She was Niamh of the Golden Hair, daughter of Manannan and Queen of the Higher Court of Aen Elle. From amongst the Temians she chose Oisin to be her lover. She bade him mount up behind her on her faerie steed and they rode over the land to the sea and then across the tops of the waves to the enchanted land or Tir Na Lia, the most delightful county to be found of greatest repute under the sun. They saw wondrous sights as they journeyed. Faerie palaces appeared on the surface of the sea. At one of these Niamh asked Oisin to set free a Tuathe de Danan woman who was prisoner of Fomor, one of the Demons of the deep sea. Oisin fought the Fomor and set the lady free, who was later knighted by Queen Niamh as Leader of the Wild Hunt.  _

_ Soon they reached the Land of the Young and Oisin remained there with his love for three hundred years. Together they ruled Tir Na Lia with iron fist over iron fist. Under Oisin’s rule, the Siege of Tylwyth Teg decimated the Human-Unicorn alliance and assured Faerie Sovereignty of the Aen Elle for years to come.  _

Jaskiers hands shook on the page. 

_ After 300 years had passed, Oisin suddenly remembered his home and the Temians and had a yearning to see them again. He asked leave to visit his homeland. Niamh furnished him with a faerie steed, but warned Oisin at all costs not to let his feet touch earthly soil. Oisin gave his word to take care and swiftly reached Temeria. However he found all had changed from the land he remembered. Finn and the Temians had become a legend of the past. The new Church had converted the land. Even the men seemed different, smaller, compared to the men he remembered. Oisin noticed three of them trying vainly to lift a great stone. He stooped to lift it for them with one hand but as he did so his golden saddle-girth snapped and he fell to the ground. Immediately the Faerie horse vanished and Oisin was left trapped in Aen Seidhe for the rest of his days.  _

That was the end of the tale. Jaskier sat back in his chair, gaze unfocused.

The name, Oisin. 

His father's name. 

_

  
  


They cross the Pontar at Flotsam (terrible name) into Redania mostly still all in one piece. 

The map in his mind points at him and says  _ okay, this is it, this is where you head west and go home.  _ As they move through the too-cool midday Jaskier runs it over and over in his head, counts his provisions without looking at them, stares at Geralt’s precious back and says it over and over and over again.  _ Time to go. Time to go. TIme to go.  _

That night he dreams so violently of fire that he wakes Cirilla with his screaming. Gasping for air, he holds a hand out to Geralt who has startled into a fully upright defensive stance, and the burning barely leaves him. 

It's an omen if he ever gets one. 

So, he does what he does best. Let the inexorable tide carry him to where he is to go. 

In the morning after the dream they ride for a few hours but begin to slow early in the day, Cirilla complaining of stomach pain. They make camp just as the dark is beginning to settle, far too early in the day. Their slow creep northwards only spurs the winter season and there is a bitter chill. 

Geralt sets up the tent, silent, and Jaskier takes it upon himself to pause in his ever present monologue and inform him that he’s taking Cirilla with him to find kindling. Jaskier watches his shoulders stop, acknowledging that he’s heard him, but there’s nothing else. He doesn’t even get a grunt. 

The dusk of the day has darkened the already grey woods into a muted, dreamlike twilight. Cirilla keeps pace beside him, picking up twigs as she goes, fists clenching and unclenching, discomfort radiant as a beam of light. 

Jaskier sighs, looks behind them: Geralt is still in sight, and in shouting distance. He plops to the ground. Cirilla stops. 

Face empty and carefully still, she looks at him. Again Jaskier realizes how damn small she is. How young. Gods, did he ever look like that? Did people really see a kid this small and then do what they did to him anyway? Who fucking does that? 

“Sit with me,” he says, well aware that if she has any sense then he’s being weird as hell. Sense or no, she sits without  _ too  _ much hesitation. 

“Okay,” he says, fairly relieved. The air is noticeably lighter, away from the strange tension he and Geralt are carrying. “Okay.” Really lighter, oh wow. He drops his head and rubs his temples. 

“Let’s just take a deep breath for a moment,” he says to his lap. “Just really fill our lungs. Shoulders down, too.” Taking his own advice as he is talking mostly to himself, he peers up into the canopy, letting the air settle inside him, gusting out all the cacophonous sound that doesn’t get said. 

Cirilla, the little marvel, must be well and truly trained up by her various private music tutors, because she just sullenly drops all the tension out of her little body with a sigh that could knock over a small bird. 

“Good,” Jaskier says, “Very good.” Using the fortification gathered from this little exercise, he begins. “Alright. Now I’m going to ask a gross hygienic question. Is that okay?” 

Cirilla nods, sour face suggesting she’s far too old for such coddling. Teenager. Regardless, he lowers his voice and tries his best not to make either of them look a fool. 

“Have you had a monthly bleed yet?” He asks. She hesitates, then nods. 

“Are you having it now?” More hesitation, this time embarrassed, and then a nod again. 

“Okay, okay, that’s fine, normal for your age. Do you… know what you need?” 

Cirilla wrinkles her nose. “Clean rags, boiled in water. I… took some from Roaches saddle bags, they're the ones Geralt uses for bandages.” She looks off to the left as she says this, clearly un-torn, but aware that maybe she should be. Jaskier laughs. 

“No, that’s excellent. You should come to me if you need anything. The most important thing is cleanliness. Nothing is too embarrassing, all right? Even if it’s just for pain. I have things for that.” 

Cirilla wrinkles her nose. “Why?” 

Jaskier laughs at her and glances back to where Geralt is, counting out potions. “Well. Lets just say there's lots more than the indecent to be learned in the company of women. But, ah, tit for tat…” he sighs. 

“Have you heard the ballad of Aenadon, my dear?” Slowly, Cirilla nods. Of course she’s heard it. It’s a massive classic, everyone’s heard it. 

Jaskier thinks, passingly, on what he’s about to disclose to this child he really doesn’t know. He finds himself a bit surprised to realize how little he cares. He’s always known a child’s safety comes far beyond any adult's comfort. Even if it’s just hygienic safety. Even if it means that kid can’t keep their damn mouth shut. And anyways, Cirilla deserves to know she has a contender. 

“You remember, in the fourth verse of the ballad, when the King removes Aenadons helm?” 

Cirilla looks blank for a few moments more before gasping lightly. In an accusing tone, she says “But- You can’t be a woman!” and Jaskier chuckles, cutting her off before she can get much louder. He rubs his stubble self consciously. “And I’m not. But when I was born, it was a different story. And although I am now myself, and wouldn’t take any of it back, I know… well. Quite a bit more than Geralt, if nothing else.” 

“So…” Cirilla says. “You  _ aren’t  _ a woman?”

Jaskier laughs, sweating a bit.  _ She’s just a kid,  _ he tells himself. “No. Not really.” 

“But you have-” 

“Yes! um, yes. Rather impolite line of questioning. But yes.” 

Far from the relief he imagined, Cirilla now appears more tense, and in fact, more present. “You and Geralt aren’t  _ sleeping  _ together, are you?” She asks, acerbic. Jaskier startles. 

What? “What? No! No, why on-“ 

“Is Geralt sleeping with Yennefer?” 

Melitele’s left tit, she is Calanthe’s grandchild. 

“Um… I can’t really…Yennefer? Well,” He coughs. “Not anymore?” 

Cirilla makes a  _ truly  _ disgusted  _ ugh  _ noise and crosses her arms. “He won’t tell me anything about her. He said she’s a sorceress, and then I asked when we were going to see her, and then he stopped talking about it at all.” 

_ Oh, Geralt,  _ he thinks. “Yes, he would.” 

Cirilla looks up at him with those huge, adorable, unnerving eyes. 

Sighing expansively, Jaskier begins to pull himself up. “Well, for what it’s worth, I think Yennefer would love to meet you.” 

Cirilla perks up at that, scrambling to her feet after him. “You know her?” 

Jaskier chuckles, absentmindedly palming his chest, where a locket lay body-warm under his layers. “Yes, I suppose I do. Don’t tell Geralt, though. We want to scare him.” 

By the time the two of them were back with kindling, it was completely dark, and Geralt made Jaskier look everywhere for his flint and steel even though he had  _ night vision, I  _ know _ you have night vision Geralt, you can’t lie to me.  _

They fall asleep, warm if not well fed, and closer than last night if not as close as they could be. So far, so good. 

_

Jaskier discovered the next morning that Cirilla had at some point become virtually irremovable from his side. 

She came with him to the stream when he went to collect water to boil, which was whatever. She had business to do. Normal. A bit of how much she chattered surprised him, but pleasantly, as she was a wickedly smart little girl and a kind person regardless so plenty nice to talk back and forth with. Certainly she was smart enough to run him right out of the room some day, and Melitele bless him if he didn’t help her get there. 

Although she was past the age of asking incessant and belligerent questions, it seemed she’d just either come up the cusp or just gathered enough courage to enter into that magnificent stage of just being absolutely ready to share everything you knew about  _ everything you knew.  _ With random violent prejudice against being corrected. 

Geralt watched this with what he was sure was a deeply tired eye. Jaskier wasn’t good enough not to take some sadistic pleasure from that. 

That night, after Geralt checked his traps and was working through a few conies, Jaskier rubbed his hands close to the fire and looked around them at the state of the trees. “We’re close to Hollantide, now,” he said absently. A thought occurred to him. “Oh, Cirilla,” ignoring her grumbled  _ Ciri, _ “I’ll need to find you some rowan berries… We're far north enough, I'm sure. And maybe something with cast iron, aside your silver, do you have silver? Anything, even a coin?” She nodded, looking solemn. “Good. That’s important. And it’s best you start wearing something inside out. Your underclothes, most likely, that’s what I do around this time of year…” He went on like this, checking off lists inside his head. Geralt and Cirilla looked at eachother, Ciri with confusion, Geralt with a wry amusement. “Jaskier is prone to old wives tales,” he told her in a low register. “There are charms said to keep the fair folk away. You’ve probably never heard of it because you’re from so far south, but around here, they believe in it. They say they come out of their barrows at Samhain and Lughnasadh to ferry children away to the underworld. A load of superstition and leftover bad feelings for elves, if you ask me.” 

“Nobody did,” Jaskier interjected with a carefully calculated lack of heat in mind of Ciri’s presence. 

“Don’t listen to him, dear,” he told her. “Witcher’s think they know everything and it rots their brain. That’s why you should be like me and know very little, so you always have room for more.” 

“More old wives tales?” 

“Shut up.” 

_

Geralt was cleaning Roaches feet while Jaskier distracted her by taking off her tack and smoothly avoiding her teeth when it occurred to him to ask. The time between the occurrence and when he actually gathered the nerve to look at Geralt and say something to him was a bit of a lag, but who could blame him, Roaches feet were a truly thankless fucking task. Even Geralt couldn’t be discredited if his replies were somewhat muddled by the stagnant fury of dealing with her legs. 

Once he’d finally nutted up, he gave a glance to Ciri, but she was steadfastly stumbling through setting up her tarp and he doubted she’d be done anytime soon, or really at all. She needed help. Regardless, he looked at Geralt. “Are we really going to the Witcher hold?” 

Geralt looked at him, plain shock on his face, which on him looked mostly like alarmed irritation. Roach took that opportunity to yank her foot out of his hand and take a snap at Jaskiers fingers on her girth. He pulled away without breaking his gaze from Geralt, feeling similarly alarmed by the full weight of those eyes on him. There was a moment where he opened his mouth, thinking like he ought to dissemble, but just as quick Geralt was looking away and picking up Roaches hoof again, movements jerky and so unlike him. It hadn’t passed Jaskiers notice that he’d been badly injured, and recently. Sometimes the only way you could tell he really brushed death was the way he moved not right after, but in the following weeks: like someone had shaken up his internal metronome and he couldn’t find the beat. 

Jaskier went back to Roaches girth and undid the fastening, catching the saddle as it slid toward him. It was heavy as shit, like always, and while he huffed it to the ground, Geralt said “It’s called Kaer Morhen,” in a voice loud enough that Ciri stopped her frustrated efforts and looked over at him to listen. Jaskier laid the saddle and bags to rest on the ground and placed his hand on Roach’s hot flank. 

“It’s in the Blue Mountains. I went to school there. My sword master, Vesemir, Eskel, who I trained with, and Lambert who I didn’t really, they’ll all be there to winter. They usually are.” 

Jaskier knew of Vesemir, but nothing more than a name and a couple of too-apt assumptions, if Geralt's reactions to his prodding had any merit. Eskel and Lambert he’d heard mentioned before too, other witcher’s, some of the only ones left. 

“There’s a school,” he said, chest filling up with some strange-creature feeling. 

“Not a school anymore,” Geralt said, and then moved to Roach’s back feet, and that was the end of it. 

_

  
  


They’d been following Kaedwen’s side of the Pontar for a fortnight before they were actually forced to be alone with each other. 

In an incredible feat of cravenness, Jaskier had managed up till now to keep Geralt's Child Surprise wedged firmly between them as the world's most traumatized conversational crutch. Obviously, it wasn’t fair to make her shoulder the burden of that particular unhappiness. But, again, Jaskier was a coward and a dick, when he wanted to be. 

They were stopped in Ban Gleán for the night, and shit hole that it was, it was isolated and relatively untouched by the influx of the refugee crisis. 

Cirilla had just gone off for a bath, sorely needed. 

“Go ahead,” Geralt said as she wandered past hearing range. 

“Hm?” Jaskier replied, not looking at him. He was working on whittling a small… creature, out of wood. Geralt, taken off guard at his indifference, just sat like a log for a good gratifying moment. 

“Tear me a new one,” he said eventually, making an abortive gesture. “Cuss me out. Call me names.” 

Jaskier made sure to really relish his obvious discomfort, picking out a nick in the wood to be the nose. “Whatever. It’s all within your rights.” 

Giving a snort, he flipped the wood over and tried to look like he was deciding what detail to put in next and not like he was trying to burn a hole into it out of sheer fury. Of course  _ he  _ gets to pick whether Jaskier can be angry, whether- Melitele, but he sounds like Yennefer. He sighs. 

Geralt sounded so tired that what usually would be the scrumptious thought of doing any of that at all was instead just bleak and depressing, like kicking a dead dog. 

Didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it, though.

“Alright,” He said, putting the little piece of wood down to the audible sound of Geralt bracing himself. “You’re a gormless festering worm and I hate your stupid guts.” 

Geralt released a long, tired breath, like a sad deflated laugh. Jaskier wasn’t done. “You’re a fucking dick. You’re an asshole. And no,” he said, stopping Geralt as he had opened his mouth, “You don’t get to say  _ I know _ , because you really don’t.” There's a lot he has to bite back, there, because it’s not something he ever wanted to say in anger, and anyways is nearly impossible to communicate to another human person let alone this one. “And you know the worst part, Geralt? I just- I just can’t hold up the anger,” he said, looking to his friend at last. “I can’t fucking be angry at you becuase I’m so tired.” 

Silence. 

He laughed in a way that really sucked. “Most of the time when I think about it- thought about it-  _ you-  _ I just felt dead. In that area.” He picked his awful little chunk of wood back up, thoroughly upset in a way that didn’t feel like it would ever come out of him. 

Then he took a deep breath and said “but it’s been so long. I missed you- I always miss you.” When he inhaled it was ragged. “Don’t go thinking this is easy for me to say, because it's  _ not.  _ I- Just because I can’t make myself an impenetrable fortress doesn’t mean I’m not vulnerable when I’m  _ vulnerable.” _

Jaskier looked at Geralt while Geralt looked at him, feeling his eyes burn with- something. Geralt looked stricken. “If I’m going to stay,” Jaskier said, “I need you to tell me you want me here.” 

Basically immediately he regretted saying it. It was what he meant, maybe, but not what he needed Geralt to hear. And anyways he didn’t think… maybe there was something wrong with him, but getting what he wanted because he’d  _ asked _ for it did not really sit well with him here. 

Brow twisted, in displeasure or anger; Geralt looked at the ground between them. “It’s not that I- Hm,” he started, turning his jaw further away. In the faint light his face still had a devastated quality, further twisted by his grasping for words. “It’s not about. What I want. I- first of all,” he started over, actually holding up a finger at him. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. Obviously. Everything I have ever- I have regretted every cruel word I did not spare you.” The liquid amber of those stupid witcher eyes, shot through with remorse, seemed to stab Jaskier right in the tender bits as Geralt turned his face back on him. “And I never tell you. I’m sorry. You’ve done more for me than I could ever repay and that. Is not a comfortable feeling, to me. What I said to you on the mountain was just… I wanted to lash out at myself and you were the closest thing I could ruin.” 

Jaskier felt a bit like he’d just been hollowed out with a spoon. 

“As for what I want… I don’t even know what I deserve, Jaskier. I don’t…” Geralt sighed, looking like a crumpled ball of awful feelings and like some of the awful feelings were fighting the other awful feelings because they hated each other so fucking much. 

Jaskier laughed wetly. “Fatherhood has made you soft.” He wipes his nose. “Well. How about this. If I could… come with you to Kaer Morhen. And. This is a ‘perfect world’ scenario where no one stabs us in our beds, and I came with you and nothing bad happened and I taught Ciri chord progression and you killed rabbits for us and we all go to your terrible sad broken Witcher keep in the mountains and nobody dies, is that… Would you want that? Is that what you  _ want  _ to happen?” Geralt looked at him, all of him, from his feet to his head, and as though he was afraid of the word itself said “Yes.” 

Jaskier smiled at him, just a little. “Then I’m coming.” More fool for him. 

_

  
  


That night, they slept under an actual roof, clean and relatively well fed. Ciri slept on a pallet of all the blankets from the bed at the foot of it on the floor and Jaskier slept on the side of the mattress near the wall while Geralt slept next to him, defensive position, closest to the door.

Although nothing really kept him from sleep and he was comfortable enough, Jaskier found himself sitting up awake late enough into the night that both his companions had fallen into a deep slumber. For Geralt at least, this was rare, and it brought a strangely unbreakable tranquility upon him to see it. 

From where the moon shone in high through the window, he watched as moving silhouettes of northern trees played shadows across the room. Cirilla slept peacefully silent, without even any shifting to disturb the blue night. She looked like she could be anyone’s child. Geralt's face was nothing but a mass of shadows, but he watched it with an aching fondness as though it were wrought with detail. 

Within a far away place he thinks of the distance between them, all the ways he never really came back into this world. All the ways that, although he was born in Aen Seidhe, he was created in Aen Elle. What that made him. Who he’d been there, as opposed to what he was now- it was such a different arrangement of things than what he knew Geralt must suppose, and sometimes he forgot, just trying to bend himself to understand Geralt, how much stranger things really were. He had no clue where to begin reconciling the differences in the person he’d shown this man and the person he was. Sometimes, they were the same, but so often somehow polarizing! And he was never sure what the right answer was, or  _ who.  _ Or if there was one. 

He was shocked and a bit nauseated to realize that never before had complete and total honesty been his goal, and now that it was… It'd been so long since the truth was the right answer. At this point he was terrified to look for it and find it missing. 

How would he ever repay Geralt for his own transparency then?

_

  
  


The next morning Geralt goes out alone to buy Cirilla her cold weather gear. She and Jaskier stay in their room, rented for another night even though they’ll be moving before dusk. Ciri, the darling, had found some rowan berries and toted them along in complete secrecy until the night just before, during which she had revealed them with a smug flourish and collected many accolades from Jaskier as she had surely meant to. 

Having collected a thread and needle from Geralt, he went about the process of educating her in the esoteric art form of base level bodily protection. The needle is a bit thick, but he takes some of his own silk mending thread and shows Cirilla how to link the berries, and she thinks he’s very trite and annoying because obviously it’s so simple and  _ I know how to sew _ . They both get their hands stained with crushed red juice and he even gets her to laugh a bit. 

When it’s all done they have a bracelet for each member of their company, (Yennefer somehow included in this number) and necklaces would be better, but it’s not the season and Jaskiers amazed Ciri was able to find any at all. 

When that’s all done, she asks him to play a song. “Something true,” she says, when he asks her what. “Something that really happened.” 

He plays her the ballad of Tam Lin. That’s a nice, rollicking reel, and it lulls him into an almost trance like state, enough that he does all the verses instead of just the pertinent ones. It seems to have had a similar effect on the princess, whose otherworldly eyes are half lidded with her head rested on her weary hands. “But that’s not real,” she protests. “It couldn’t be. I don’t think it could.” 

Jaskier chuckles and looks out the window at their neighboring evergreens. “There is much more to what is real than what you can see or what has happened in this world, your highness.” The trees make something singular inside him lurch and ache. “But you’re right that I don’t know if it’s true. I think it could be.” He looks at her conspiratorially. “If I sing you a very secret song, which I know to be true, will you swear not to tell a soul what it says?” 

This wakes her up. She nods her head fast, sitting up straight on the bed with her legs crossed. He smiles. “Good.” 

Readjusting Filandrils lute, he sings. 

“ _ Oh but the farrow know,” _

_ “Her hungry eye, her ancient soul _

_ It's carried by the sneering menagerie.”  _

Cirilla's brow is twisted, like she thinks Jaskier is fooling her again with fake stories. He carries on, somber, for once thinking that it is up to her judgement, to believe it, rather than his delivery. 

_ “Know what it is to grow _

_ Beneath her sky, her punishing cold _

_ To slowly learn of her ancient misery,” _

_ “To be twisted by something _

_ A shame without a sin _

_ Like how she twisted the bog man _

_ After she married him,”  _

The strings twang and a shadow darkens the room. 

_ “Rare is this love, keep it covered _

_ I need you to run to me, run to me, lover _

_ Run until you feel your lungs bleeding.”  _

_ “But in all the world _

_ There is one lover worthy of her _

_ With as many souls claimed as she _

_ But for all he's worth _

_ He still shatters always on her earth _

_ The cause of every tear she'd ever weep _

_ Rushing to shore to meet her _

_ Foaming with loneliness _

_ White hands to fondle and beat her _

_ Give her his onliness _

_ Rare is this love, keep it covered _

_ I need you to run to me, run to me, lover _

_ Run until you feel your lungs bleeding _

_ Rare is this love, keep it covered _

_ I need you to run to me, run to me, lover…”  _

Cirilla takes a great breath in. He pulls off the strings, tongue lost for speech. 

“That was beautiful,” she said, sounding almost as moved as Jaskier felt by the song, so untouched it was to him, reaching through the distance of years to pull it back. He tried to make a noise, an  _ Ah,  _ but it came out a clear rasp and he laughed. “And now, princess,” he said, “you must never tell anyone.” 

“Why?” she whispered. “Who is the song about?” 

“Oh, Ciri,” he said. “It’s a terrible life to be incurious, but I hope you never find out.” 

_

  
  


That night, Jaskier leaves Cirilla to play pan pipes in the common room and gets no money but a few more tender boons: bolt of wool, sprig of edelweiss; a wrapped cloth that reveals two buns which are still hot. There's few folk at the inn. Mostly quiet locals getting their ale or travel hardened young men making the passes for harvest time, letting out work at farms seeking extra hands. A few pockets of murmuring refugees, and Jaskier doesn’t know where he fits in the crowd or how he appears. There's plenty of unsavory assumptions to be made of two men travelling with a young girl alone. The sense of danger he carries makes him feel as though they shimmer like gems on a streambed of stones, bright with intrigue. 

After awhile he puts the pan pipes away and takes out the lute, warming up for a few minutes before opening into a low dirge to fit the somber mood of the night. He begins to sing, low and smokey, absentminded, and a few more people come up to place things in his basket. While sparing a nod to a white whiskered old man who gives him a bundle of cinnamon, Jaskier catches Geralt coming in the doorway with Cirilla’s parcels. The sight of him sends a bout of sparks through Jaskier from navel to throat, leaving a feeling as though if he were to cough, you might see the light come out. 

There's not a hitch in the song, but suddenly it feels just that much sweeter. Geralt catches his eye, and everything stretches. The song, the words, the sound, the fire crackling, the shadows. There's something on the edge of his mind like danger, like the flip in your stomach before a long fall into water. 

The moment snaps, and Geralt goes up the stairs to their room, but it feels as though something of it is still in him as he continues to play without pause for breath. 

It isn’t even a minute later that Geralt is coming back down the stairs again. That’s unlike him, Jaskier is thinking, imagining that perhaps Cirilla is asleep, that he came down to eat, that he came down for ale, but then there is that gaze on him again from the back of the room and something is terribly, terribly wrong in his face.  _ Cirilla,  _ he thinks, ending his song five verses early with a cough and a thank you, a good night, a bow. Then he's bundling his gifts, he’s heading towards Geralt, but it’s like he can’t move fast enough; as though he’s trying to move backwards into the place where whatever has happened hasn’t yet. Bruising grip on his arm, darkened nestled corner, Geralt's frame hiding him from the room. 

“Ciri is gone.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
